Synopsis

After the fall of Queen Mab, DJ Suzuki
resolves herself to an aimless life of entertaining, drinking, and hooking up
within the Faerie Realm. After twenty ageless years, she knows she can’t go
back to her family, despite the fact that her brother still searches for her
and the small voice telling her that her parents might have had a change of
heart about her orientation.

When a young woman named Talia shows up
at DJ’s workplace desperate for help, DJ sees a way to rid herself of the guilt
of staying away: she’ll take Talia where she needs to go if Talia rids DJ’s
family of all memory of her. Talia will be safe and DJ will be free to live in
the Faerie Realm with a clear conscience. Everyone wins.

Except there’s more to Talia and her
situation than she’s letting on. Her pursuers want more than just her. They
want the Faerie Court, and Talia is the key to getting it. If DJ can’t get
Talia to safety before they catch up, a guilty conscience will be the least of
her worries. She just might have a faerie civil war on her hands.

Excerpt

The soft glare from the street lamp
outside wakes me up. The soft drone of my box fan tempts me back to sleep, but
the knocking at my door makes that impossible. I swear under my breath, but I should
be grateful. I need to get up and get ready to go to work.

The tiny little man at the door looks me
over and scowls at my stained T-shirt, dirty jeans, and bedhead. Given that
he’s wearing leaves, vines, and moss shoes, I don’t think he has room to judge.
Thankfully, there’s no one coming in or out of the apartments to see him.

I take it and perch it on my hip. With
my free hand, I take a handful of pinecones and acorns from the bucket by the
door and dump them into the man’s hands. As he counts out his payment, I survey
the contents of the crate. It’s filled with fruits, vegetables, breads, a
gallon of milk—hey, wait a minute.

With a tip of his dusty cap, the little
man says, “A pleasure as always.”

“Hey, whoa, hold on,” I snap. “There
should be a bottle of wine in here.”

The man blinks up at me, then twiddles
his thumbs. “Pardon me, miss, but I only make your deliveries. I don’t pack
them.”

I study the large satchel hanging from
his shoulder. It looks pretty weighed down, if you ask me. “What’s in the bag?”

He shoves it behind his back. “Is Miss
accusing me of lying?” With his squeaky voice, it’s more like a small shriek.
“Faeries can’t lie. You ought to know that.”

“Yeah, but you bastards steal anything
and everything. Hand it over.”

“Miss can’t have my delivery bag. You
didn’t pay for it.”

I glance at the clock on the stove and
it nearly gives me a heart attack. It’s 8:45 and I need to be at work at nine.
I forgot to set an alarm. Curse my love of sleep.

“All right, here.” I dig in the bucket
by the door again and pull out a small plastic baggie. “You give me my wine and
I’ll give you this dirt from a witch’s grave. Deal?”

His eyes get as big as harvest moons,
and I know I’ve got him hooked like a goblin on gold. He digs around in his bag
and, lo and behold, pulls out my bottle of Pixie Dust Sparkling Wine. “You
drive a hard bargain, Miss.”

We make the exchange, and he studies the
dirt in the bag like an elated mad scientist, then tips his hat again. “Have a
lovely evening, Miss.” With a series of pops and a wisp of smoke, he
disappears, leaving behind the smell of burnt herbs. His evening probably won’t
be so lovely once he realizes I got that dirt from a playground.

Oh, well.

I kick the door shut behind me and sort
my groceries like a mad woman, tossing the things that need it in the fridge
and leaving the rest of the counter. Glass jars filled with herbs for tea line
the bottom of the crate, even though I assured my boss I still had plenty. If
the faerie food didn’t give me longevity, then surely the amount of herbal tea
they make me drink would.

Being cursed to only eat faerie food
from here to eternity isn’t so bad, given how much healthier they eat than
humans. The only things I ever miss are my mom’s homemade lasagna and my dad’s
barbecue. Faeries don’t cook much of either, unfortunately.

Thankfully, they like chocolate almost
as much as I do. There’s three bars sitting between the teas. Heedless of the
time, I squeal for joy and rip the paper off of one, chomping off a huge bite
and letting the beautiful blend of bitter and sweet cocoa melt on my tongue as
slowly as possible, because, in addition to tasting like heaven, it tastes like
home.

It tastes like chocolate chip cookies,
fresh out the oven after making snowmen in the moonlight with my brother. It
tastes like Halloween candy and staying up late to watch scary movies. It
tastes like cake at countless birthday parties.

Just like the chocolate, the aftertaste
of the memories is more bitter than sweet. I wrap it up and reach for an apple
instead.

I throw on a black tank top and take a
few bites. The shirt reveals the rivers of Japanese wood-block style images
interwoven with Gaelic knots tattooed down my muscular arms. As I one-handedly
rake a brush through my hair, a tuff of dark brown on top of my head and
pixie-short sides, I finish the apple with the other. There’s nothing but the
core as I put on some basic makeup: foundation, mascara, and some smoky eye
shadow to frame my round monolid eyes like my dad’s. A bit of tinted lip balm
is enough for my full lips, which match my mother’s.

The clock on the stove reads 8:55 by the
time I grab my equipment bag and head out the door for the night. A few of the
building tenants smile as they pass me on the stairs, and I return the gesture,
even though I’ve never learned a single name. It’s too risky. People would
notice too many strange things after a while, like strange little men
delivering my groceries for example. Besides, my nightly work schedule doesn’t
leave a lot of room for a normal social life, even if I did still know how to
socialize with humans. I’m not sure I do.

On hot June nights like this, I drive
with my windows down. The wind off Lake Michigan feels fresh and alive. It
fuels the hustle and bustle of downtown Grand Harbor and helps wake me up for
the long night ahead.

While the city hums with
activity—tourist families shopping, local artists selling their works,
independent musicians trying to make it on the bar scene—the area where I work
is as dead as the old factory buildings that surround it. At least, it is for
now. In a few hours, it’ll come alive.

Not that the humans will ever know.

When I first left the Faerie Court all
those months ago, I thought it would be hard to walk the fine line of existing
in the two worlds, but it’s actually quite simple. When I work, I’m a part of
the Faerie Realm: magic and strange creatures intermingling in a world just out
of humanity’s line of sight. At home, I’m as human as I was before I stumbled
into my mistress’s lair those twenty years ago. It’s all TV, eating out, and
paying my bills. The two don’t mix. Faeries want nothing to do with the Human Realm
and most humans don’t believe in faeries enough to go looking for them.

Not that they should.

I park and slip in the nightclub’s back
door. The vacant dance floor and dark empty chairs look eerier while unoccupied
than when they’re overflowing with mystical creatures. I hate being alone in
this place. Luckily, I hardly ever am. I find my boss, Iver, in his natural
habitat behind the bar whistling as he takes inventory. He doesn’t notice me
come in, so I take the opportunity to mess with him.

As he kneels below the counter, I
silently plop down on a barstool and wait. He sets a nearly empty bottle of
vodka on the bar, which I hide behind my back the second his hand disappears
again. He reaches back up for it, gropes around, then stands back up with a cross
look on his face.

“Evening, Iver,” I greet with a wide,
unassuming grin. “How’s it going?”

He shakes his head, but smirks, and
holds out his hand for the bottle. “It was going great before my imp of an
employee showed up. You’re late, by the way.”

“In my defense, the delivery faerie
tried to cheat me out of my alcohol. I couldn’t just let that slide.” I hand
him the bottle and hop off the stool. “Which reminds me…”

As he puts the bottle in its original
spot, I flip the door latch and let myself behind the counter. He’s tall, even
for an elf, so I have to stand on my toes and pull on his shoulder to plant a
kiss on his cheek. It’s completely innocent. He made it clear on day one he
didn’t date employees. It’s kind of a bummer. He’s a looker and that’s been my
only standard for a while now.

“Thank you for the chocolate.”

“I figured you deserved it.” He wipes my
kiss off with the back of his hand. “You’ve been working particularly hard
lately, despite your tardiness.”

“That’s because I don’t have any more
online classes to worry about, thank God.” Since I wound up trapped in Faerie
at sixteen, I never finished high school. There’s a lot I don’t understand
about the twenty-first century, but being able to get a GED online has been an
absolute blessing, especially since dial-up is a thing of the past. Having
friends in Faerie that were willing to help me write up some fake transcripts
certainly helped too.

I can’t tell you why I got the dumb
thing. The Faerie Realm isn’t exactly renowned for its stellar universities, so
it’s not like I’m going to be continuing my education any time soon, seeing as
I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got all the time, booze, fun, and entertainment in
the world, so why would I? A little voice in the back of my head, which sounded
a lot like my brother, just told me it was a good idea. My brother tended to
have a lot of those. I get pissed at myself for getting it if I think about it
too long. It’s almost like I still want my family to be proud of me or some
shit, which is nonsense.

I kneel behind the bar and hunt for
something to drink. It’s all here for faerie consumption, so I have plenty to
pick from. I think I’ll go with a rum and Coke.

“If you’re so grateful to me, maybe
you’ll ease my nerves and drink a little less?” Iver raises an eyebrow as he
watches me drop ice into a glass.

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” I reply, precariously measuring out the rum. “I don’t drink that much.
And I always make sure to sober up before I leave. Can’t enjoy eternity if I’m
dead.”

Iver sighs. “What if a human were to
come in here and see you?”

“Humans don’t come in here,” I remind
him, swirling my drink before taking a sip. Needs more rum. Maybe a little
vodka to dilute the sweetness. “The one time they did, Calista got rid of them.”

She accidentally got rid of me too. Some
dweeb asked her to bewitch a group of human girls, who had wandered in here, to
make them leave. Since I didn’t come here that often back then, she thought I
was one of them. It was quite startling to be dancing one minute only to wake
up on James-Child College’s campus the next. We’ve become pretty good…well, I’m
not sure what you’d call us.

“I just don’t like taking risks. That’s
all,” Iver says.

I roll my eyes and lean on the counter.
“Right. Mr. Let’s-Stage-A-Coup doesn’t like taking risks.”

Iver gives me a dirty look. He doesn’t
like it when I bring up the coup last October in which he and a bunch of his
buddies took back the Faerie Court. He’s too humble. Given that he helped take
out Queen Mab, whom I served for the better half of twenty years, I’m eternally
grateful to him and everyone else for it.

“That was a completely different
situation,” he huffs. “You’re comparing pixies to trolls.”

“If you say so. How’s the court doing,
anyway? Other than sending us more enjoyable customers, that is.”

Iver wipes the whole counter down before
he answers. “It’s fine.”

“Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise?”

My boss glances around the club to make
sure we’re still alone. Leaning close, he mutters, “You know the string of human
disappearances lately?”

“Yeah. It’s all over the news around
here.” I down the rest of my drink and reach for the bottle again.

“The queen is starting to suspect it has
something to do with Faerie. More specifically, the Mab supporters who broke out
last November.”

I really feel for the woman. First, her
sister, Mab, took the throne and trashed the place for about a hundred years,
then as soon as she gets it back, several of her sister’s supporters manage to
escape. Now she’s got human disappearances on her plate? Who would want to be
Queen of Faerie?

“I thought faeries only snatched
children,” I muse, mixing my second drink. “Every missing person I’ve seen so
far is either in their late teens or early twenties.”

“We’re not supposed to anymore. She
dismissed the connection at first, but apparently, she’s picking up a pattern.
They’re all loners. They disappear at night with their doors locked and live in
secluded, wooded areas.”

“What does Queen Shaylee think?”

These days, the Faerie Court is split in
two. Queen Titania rules the Seelie Court, the area around here. Her daughter,
Shaylee, rules the Unseelie Court farther to the south. I’ve never met Queen
Shaylee, but if the stories I’ve heard about her are true, I wouldn’t be
surprised if she was behind it. After pretending to be Queen Mab’s long-lost
daughter and tricking a human girl into sacrificing herself so that the coup
could happen, she doesn’t seem like the most trustworthy individual.

“Her Majesty Shaylee is currently away,
dealing with some rowdy solitary fae,” Iver says. “Though her champion,
Dominic, assures Queen Titania that there hasn’t been any suspicious activity
in the Unseelie Court.”

“Of course, he said there isn’t,” I
scoff. I scowl down at my glass. I jacked up the rum-cola ratio again.

“Dominic’s loyalty still lies more with
Titania. If he thought Shaylee was doing something wrong, he’d be sure to say
so.” Iver snatches the rum bottle out of my reach and sets it on the counter
behind him. “And you have a job to do, missy. Don’t get out of control.”

“I’m not,” I huff, swirling my drink.
“I’ve worked in far more inebriated states than this.”

Iver sighs. “Don’t you have equipment to
set up?”

I throw back the rest of my drink and
wipe my mouth. “All right, all right. I’m going. Thanks for the gossip update.”

Iver takes my glass. “You’re an honorary
faerie. You ought to be in the know.”

Honorary faerie. That has a nice ring to
it.

A few regulars trickle into the club as
I set up my music equipment. Luckily, all the speakers, mics, and most of the
wires were here when I took the job back in November. I just had to provide my
own laptop and controller. Neither of them are very fancy, and I had to learn
on the fly. Truth be told, I’m okay at best. I can do basic effects, put
together a decent playlist, and weave it together seamlessly, but that’s about
it. I’m more of an acoustic guitar girl, honestly.

At least, I was before I got trapped in
Faerie. I haven’t touched a guitar in forever.

Lucky for me, faeries aren’t very picky
when it comes to human music. As long as they can dance, they’re happy, so by
eleven, the dance floor is filling up with people and creatures who look like
they walked straight out of storybooks and nightmares. Bright glistening wings
shimmer in the flashing lights while hollow eyes beckon into the shadows those
too naive to know any better. Wispy ghostlike women twirl around men made of
sticks and stones, promising them all the stars in the sky in exchange for a
drink at the bar. They might give them the stars with or without the drinks
since they’re all so high on this place. I feel it too. The rhythm, the
magic-infused atmosphere, the secrets and mysteries growing in the shadows.
It’s all more intoxicating than the alcohol I’ve already consumed.

So are some of the people who dance in
the crowd.

The woman who slips behind my
workstation is the perfect example. She runs a finger up my spine as the
overwhelming smell of cloves hits me, then she wraps her arms around my waist,
swaying in time to the music with me.

She removes one of my headphones to
whisper, “Have you missed me?” That smooth, sultry voice sends a chill through
me. Her cool body sends another one.

“Of course,” I reply. “Where’ve you
been? I haven’t seen you around lately.”

“Out and about,” she giggles. “You know
how it is.”

I sure do. I have no idea how or where
Calista spends most of her time, and I guess it’s not really any of my
business. What I do know is that whenever we happen to bump into each other
here at the club, we have a good time together, no strings attached. Some of
the other patrons are pretty good substitutes, male and female alike, but I’d
be lying if I said Calista wasn’t something special.

“Looks like you’re working hard,” she
mutters, lowering her lips to my jaw. “You deserve a break.”

I swallow hard and try to think
straight, which is nearly impossible since her hands have started to roam.
“Enticing as always, but I’ve got another two hours before my break. Iver’d
have my hide if I slipped off now.”

Calista huffs and lays her head on my
shoulder. “Who am I supposed to play with until then?”

“Go dance,” I suggest, lowering the
volume on one song as another starts. “I’m sure you’ll find somebody.”

I try to ignore the way my heart jumps
and how my skin heats up and attempt to focus on fading to the next song
instead. Paying attention to those reactions could mean I might be developing
feelings for her, and that’s a no-go. She just meant that she has a better time
fooling around with me than with other people here. That’s it.

“How about this,” I say. “My buzz is
wearing off. Go get me a drink, and then we’ll try to work something out,
okay?”

“Sounds good.” Calista kisses my neck
and disappears. She shimmies through the dancing crowd, her loose translucent
sleeves and bare midriff flowing with the beat while her low-hanging skirt
sways.

I try to focus on the music and forget
her words. I’m her favorite in the way we all have our favorite drinks to get
wasted with. That’s it. Even if she meant something more, it’s not like I’d pry
and risk ruining the fun we have. Trying to get close to people, opening up to
them, that’s the quickest way to let things go to shit, especially in the
Faerie Realm. And I don’t mean just bad breakups. She could get seriously hurt.
Not everyone here likes that I’m human or that I used to work for Queen Mab.
They could use either of those facts to get…creative. Things are fine the way
they are. Besides, nymphs aren’t exactly famous for their ability to hold down
a steady relationship.

Time passes, and then some more creeps
by. I’m beginning to think Calista found someone else after all, but I survey
the crowd just in case. I really did want that drink.

The Employees Only door flies open and
catches my eye. It only leads to the back parking lot, but Iver usually keeps
it cursed so no one can sneak in without paying. Since I’m human, I’m the only
one who can go in and out without getting hurt.

A young woman sprawls in anyway,
disheveled, bruised, and barefoot. She tries to straighten her ripped gown and
breathes heavily as she looks around, in what appears to be an attempt to get
patrons’ attention, with shaking hands and wide eyes

Someone help me.

Purchase

Meet the Author

Tay grew up reading too many fairy tales and watching too many movies, which is probably why she writes fantasy now. When she’s not at her day job or writing, she can be found taking spontaneous drives to new places, and drinking way too much coffee. Her first book, “Portraits of a Faerie Queen,” is set to be released in 2017.